***Authors note: Only a few of the characters you see here are fake. Others came from real people. Or at least people on the other end of a role playing server on Halo: Custom Edition
The map we played on was Celer_Exile_ODST
Characters:
Delta: Imaginary character. I put him in this story, and used my imagination to create this part of the story. I wasn't in the server during this time, so I did my best to create what would fit in this slot with the rest of the story.
Rust: Real character, based off the player Rust on Halo Custom Edition. He played as out leader.
Rookie: That was me. It was my first week on the job when our outpost was attacked. I was lucky to have stayed alive to the very end. Glad the story actually permitted me to be a main character.
Renegade: Real character. Based off the player Renegade. He played as a bad ass. Changed his character up a little bit to make him more theatrical. Other than that, this was how he acted in the game.
SF: Based on the player SF-158 (Or something like that. Sorry I forgot your name.) He joined the server at the same time as me. He saved my life multiple times. He became my leader throughout the story, and later the real leader. And he was a damn good leader too.
Kate: Originally a player, and a big one, in the game until about halfway through the role play. Her laptop died and so we just role played as her while we went through.
Lokowski: Real. Based on the player Lokowski. (Or at least I believe that was his name)The medic in the game. He dies quite theatrically, but I had to change up how he died, because if not, then he would have been injured throughout the entire story. He did a great job as well.
General: False character. Only used in one interrogation scene in the role play. Given a bigger character in this story.
Kyle: Originally Spartean 127 (Or something like that. Sorry) He played with me in a few of the missions until he died. He was good at what he did.
Cole: Originally cole_? (I don't know the other characters in his name) He didn't truly have a true purpose, except when he flew me out of the exploding ship. I actually meshed Cole, and another guy named glowstick together. It formed one funny badass pilot.***
It was snowing that day. The snow was so thick that you would lose clear vision from about 10 feet away, and silhouettes would disappear at 30. A blizzard had been going on for a month now, and it didn't look like it was going to cease anytime soon. It was cold, and there was a smell of insurrection in the air.
These insurrectionists branched themselves from the UNSC, and created their own, surprisingly large, army within months of it's start. After that, they started attacking the UNSC military bases. They were getting new members everyday, and with such a large army, some smaller outposts had fallen easily under their might.
The main bases are all that remains, besides one or two small bases located near them. These main bases held four times the amount of marines than the insurrectionists had.
"Delta," Cole, a pelican pilot, said.
"Yes?" Delta replied.
"What's the weather like back there?" Cole asked.
Delta made a slightly angered face from the back of the flying pelican, and some of the others made that same face in agreement.
"It's cold. Really... cold. You?" Delta responded.
"Quite nice up here. I just installed as heating system, and as it turns out, I didn't install it correctly. It only works for the cockpit at the moment." Cole replied, bragging at the fact that he wasn't freezing his ass off right before going on a mission in a blizzard.
"Yah, whatever asshole." Delta said, making Cole chuckle.
"Alright, listen up." Rust, the leader of the squad and the colonel of the west side military base in that freezing wasteland, said, "Our mission is simple here today. There are three small bases around here, they used to be field hospitals."
"I used to work at one of them before I was moved to command." Lokowski, a veteran medic who had saved and lost countless lives in the heat of battle, replied.
"That's great. Now, we have to take these bases. They aren't very heavily guarded, so it should be easy to get inside and wipe them out." Rust instructed, "Once we do that, we will wait for reinforcements, and then we're going back to command."
"Sounds great." Kate, the second in command at the west side command center, said.
"Oh, and one more thing. Leave one of them alive for interrogation, okay." He said.
"Yes sir." Everybody in the pelican, except for Cole, chanted.
"Good. Cole!" Rust screamed.
"Yes?" Cole asked from the front.
"You're picking us up once we're finished. Clear?" Rust said.
"Clear." Cole replied, obviously disappointed. He had been trying to get the paint job on his bird done for weeks, but every time he was almost done, he would be called into duty, by this squad in particular.
"How long until we reach the landing zone?" Delta asked.
"30 seconds. Get your weapons ready. I'm picking up a small amount of enemies on the radar." Cole informed.
"Sync your motion trackers, it'll be hard to see them out there. I don't want any friendly fire going on!" Rust yelled, and then started setting up his own tracker from the tac pad in his wrist. Everybody else did the same.
"10 seconds!" Cole warned, and everybody in the ship started to load their weapons.
When the racket was over, silence took control of the ship. Nobody spoke, and the 16 men inside just sat, waiting for the call. These four or five seconds seemed to take forever. It seemed like an eternity for Cole to shout...
"We're in! Move it, move it!"
Everybody jumped out of the pelican as fast as they could, and started running across the half destroyed bridge they were dropped on. The footsteps of the ODSTs were loud on the concrete surface of the bridge, and the pelican's engines echoed across the cliffs.
"Cole. Go refuel. When you're done, wait for the call to pick us up." Rust said as quietly as he could through the radio.
"Alright." Cole said, and sped away to the direction they had once came from.
Once there was silence, Rust looked around the bridge. He saw that the radar showed hostiles just across the concrete mass. Thanks to the storm they didn't see them, but they sure as hell heard them.
"Clarke." Rust whispered.
"Yes sir." Clarke responded, trying to find the commanders face in the fog.
"Check ahead, see if the insurrectionists know of our presence." Rust answered.
"Alright sir." Clarke said, turning around. He did not like the idea, it was obvious that they were aware. He knew that the moment they saw him, they would shoot. But he couldn't let the leading officer down. He swallowed his spit, and crept down the bridge. Once close enough to the insurrectionists, he started to crawl toward them.
He stopped at the edge of the concrete after about a minute or two of slow crawling, and noticed that there were more than just a few soldiers. There were at least twelve, and some were carrying concrete barriers as a defense against the ODSTs.
He lifted his hand up his helmet, hitting a button, and saying, "Yes, hostiles spotted. There are at least ten. They are bringing out concrete barriers. I suggest shooting them before they set up their defense."
"Got it Clarke. Get back over here." Rust ordered.
"Yes sir." Clarke said, and crawled backward toward the squad, and then getting up and jogging back. He was relieved to be out of that danger.
"Okay, weapons free. We can barely see them, so aim with your motion trackers and not your eyes. I don't need any friendly fire today." Rust said, and clicked his tactical battle rifle off of safety.
They all nodded, and clicked the safety off of their weapons.
Delta went up first, and used the infrared sight on his tactical battle rifle to spot some targets. Lokowski followed, with little more than an M6D socom pistol. Rust followed Lokowski with a tactical battle rifle with a grenade launcher under barrel attachment. Kate ran next to him with a silenced SMG with a holographic sight. Clarke, Mason and Rich came up behind them with standard silenced SMGs.
About nine others were behind them, and they had some other random assorted weapons. Most were silenced.
"I see two, carrying a concrete barrier. Firing." Delta said, and shot two rounds into his first targets stomach. The man collapsed, dropping the barrier, making it land with a thud. The other man carrying it looked out at the men at the bridge, noticing slight shadows of the ODSTs, and tried to take out his pistol. Before he could accomplish this, Delta placed a round straight into the man's face. He fell straight backward. "Targets down." Delta said, and crept up ahead off the bridge.
A pit patting of footsteps is what followed these first few silenced shots. The ODSTs listened for any type of sound, and they heard some subtle clicking from what appeared to be firearms. They all stood for a second, fingers anxious to pull the triggers. There was no noise other than the shuffling footsteps of nervous ODSTs awaiting their first contact. The silenced sent a chill spiraling up Delta's spine.
A gunshot burst the silence, and a bullet pierced through Mason's left shoulder.
"Shit! I'm hit!" He yelled as he fell to the ground and clutched the open wound.
"I'm coming." Lokowski said while running over to the wounded private's location.
Delta aimed down his sights and spotted that a lot of the men were hiding behind some poorly placed barriers. Only about four were left standing, and they were trying to find out who else was there. Delta shot a round through another man's heart, and Kate got withing a close enough range to stab one of the men standing.
A couple insurrectionists heard this and backed up into one another. One turned around and shot the other, and was then shot by Clarke.
"Stay calm," Lokowski said, "Stay calm. This will only take a second."
"I can still fight. Just help me up..." Mason kept on saying.
"Not with that arm, you're not. I'm gonna med-evac you out of here. You can fight another day." Lokowski told him, applying pressure to the still gushing wound.
Two more loud shots were heard, and about 8 silenced shots countered it. The squad was winning this fight, with only three more enemies to go. Clarke and Rich came around the corner of one of the barriers, and fired three more shots into another insurrectionists.
"Is that all?" Clarke asked, only to have his question answered by a shove to the floor as one tried to run away from the fight. The insurrectionist was shot in the back, and he did a face plant into the snow.
Rich helped Clarke up, and the squad reloaded their weapons. Kate wiped the blood off of the teal painted arms of her ODST armor.
"Squad, report." Rust said.
"Mason's been hit." Lokowski said, "He's going to be sent to a hospital back at the base. He busted an artery in his shoulder, and without the proper tools, or environment, I don't think he'll make it."
"Where is he?" Rust asked.
"Here." Lokowski said, pointing to the bleeding, groaning soldier on the ground.
"Alright. The first transport will come in once we take this first outpost just up ahead. We'll take him back to base then. That's the best I can do." Rust told Lokowski.
"Okay." Lokowski said, and walked back over to Mason.
"Anyone else?" Rust said.
"No." Clarke replied.
"Good. Let's move to the first outpost. The sooner we take it over, the sooner Mason get taken to the hospital. Clear?" Rust said.
"Yes." Everybody chanted.
"Alright then, let's go." Rust ordered, and started running down into a small tunnel in the cliff. The marines followed him, and Lokowski carried Mason on his back. They ran through the tunnel for about thirty seconds before reaching the end of it. Rust stopped dead in his tracks and crouched behind a rock in the tunnel.
Everybody stopped behind him.
"What is it sir?" Delta asked.
"Three of them, behind those barriers along the outside." He said, and then shifted to the side, "And four more over there. If we coordinate this, we can kill them all at once and take advantage of those barriers."
"Alright." Delta said and aimed down his sights on the furthest one out there. Everyone else did the same, and the air stood still.
"On three." Rust said, "One..." The whole crowd shifted uneasily. "Two..." Delta's hand started shaking, and he held his breath to get a more accurate shot. "Three."
The entire crowd opened fire on the seven of them. The bodies collapsed instantly, and the crowd sprinted out to the covers. Two of them got shot down by a mounted turret immediately, and the others barely made it into cover.
"Damn it!" Kate yelled, and slid into cover.
"Rust!" Delta yelled.
"Yes!" Rust replied.
"Use that grenade launcher on that turret!" Delta replied.
"I'll try!" He said and aimed for the turret. Before he could fire a few bullets went passed his face, and he hid back into cover. "I can't! Too much infantry!"
"How the hell are we supposed to take them out!" Rich asked.
"I don't know!" Rust yelled.
Gunshots rattled the entire area as the group tried to think up a plan of action against the insurrectionists. Bits of snow and dirt flew up in every direction, and distracted most of them from thinking. Replaced logic with fear.
A grenade landed right next to where Clarke and Rich were hiding. Rich saw it and immediately ran out of it's way. Clarke saw it a half second later, picked it up, and yelled, "Grenade!" In an attempt to throw it back. It didn't leave his hand before exploding, demolishing the right side of his body. Rich was pelted by a rain of snow, followed by a mist of blood. He couldn't help but scream at the sight of his best friend's mangled body.
There was a horrific silence for a few moments as everybody looked at Clarke, and he then immediately looked away. Rich was pissed.
"I'm gonna try and take that thing out again!" Rich yelled, and quickly popped up from cover. He aimed down his sights, and shot the grenade straight at the machine gunner. It exploded on impact, showering the remaining areas with blood. The loud rattle of gunfire slowed down a lot, and everybody stood up to get a kill on the last remaining insurrectionists of the base.
Soon, the gunfire stopped. The mad flush of adrenaline went away, and silence fell upon them.
"This is Rust to Bird 2, over." Rust said over the radio.
"This is Bird 2, copy Rust." A man said over the com.
"I read you Bird 2, over. The first base is clear, we need you to drop off reinforcements here now. Also, we have four casualties, three dead and one wounded. I want you to take them back to the base." Rust said.
"Okay sir. Bringing the troops up now." Bird 2 said and flew up into view. The pelican turned around, and out came the soldiers they needed.
"Bird 2, we have a soldier who will be escorting these dead and wounded soldiers back to the base, his name is Rich." Rust said.
"Alright, put them in, let's go." Bird 2 said.
Rust looked away from the bird and said, "Lokowski, move the injured units to the pelican, Rich, you come over here."
Lokowski started moving the dead to the ship after he placed Mason in there, and Rich walked up to Rust. "Yes sir?" Rich asked.
"You're done here." Rust said.
"What?" Rich said.
"Yes. I know you and Clarke were good friends, I don't want you to have to fight today with all that pain still inside of you. You're getting the week off." Rust explained to Rich.
"Thank you colonel." Rich said, "thank you." Rich walked over to Lokowski and started helping him move Clarke's dead body over to the ship. Rust could tell he was about to cry. Whether it be tears of joy, sorrow, or both.
"The rest of you, form up, we're headed to the next base!" Rust yelled.
The soldiers got in a formation of six, and Delta brushed some of the snow off the light blue breast plate he wore while heading over to Rust and Kate.
"Where to?" Delta asked.
"We're going to move to the west. That's where our next objective is." Rust explained, "And once we get these guys out of here, we're moving out."
They watched Lokowski haul the last dead marine into the ship, and then turn to face the colonel. "We're all good here sir!"
"Thank you sir!" Rich said, and then turned away as the pelican's doors closed and it flew away.
Rust turned over to some marines who were staring at him.
"What?" He asked.
"What was that all about?" The marine asked.
"His best friend got killed, so I'm sending him back for this week."
"Wow. He's lucky. Hey Dave, can I shoot you?" The other marine asked.
"No Ryan, no you can't." Dave replied.
"Alright men, let's move up. Delta, you go ahead." Rust ordered.
"I'm ready for anything." Delta said.
"If you weren't, then you wouldn't be an ODST now would you?" Rust acknowledged, "Now the rest of you, stay behind him. He's the new scout."
"What happened to the old one?" Ryan asked.
"That was Clarke. I don't... I don't need to hear any more about what happened to him. Let's move." Rust said, walking forward.
Delta walked through the blood shed medical facility, and headed out the back door leading to an iced up groove in the mountain's bumpy surface. He jumped down a ledge, and headed in the direction he was ordered. The ice crunched beneath his feet as he slowly crept to the facility they would storm next. The storm was not as thick anymore, he was able to see twice as far as he could before. Even though that wasn't quite far, it was better than it had been two hours ago.
The base was just around the corner now, and Delta felt strange. He felt as if a much more threatening danger lay ahead of him at this base. Like right when he would turn the corner, he would see hell unleash itself to the world. He scratched that feeling. It made him queasy.
As he slowly stepped to the edge of the corner, he heard footsteps. He stepped back and aimed his gun directly in front of him. All the others followed suit. He waited there for almost two minutes for some idiotic insurrectionists to run around the corner just to get mowed down by a wave of lead. But no one came, the footsteps became silent.
"What the hell." Delta said, irritated. He lowered his gun got back up on his feet. He took a few steps toward the corner, and then the unexpected happened. An entire wave of insurrectionists ran around the corner and started opening fire. Two men were shot next to Kate, and Delta was knocked on his ass by three of the renegades. While most of the insurrectionists were busy firing at the ones firing at them, one of them noticed Delta on the floor. Delta reached for his pistol, but it was too late. The insurrectionist pumped his shotgun and fired a shell straight into his stomach. The armor that was there stopped some of the damage, but not enough to stop the shotgun's shell. What once was a well defined soldier's stomach, and the UNSC's most expensive mass produced suit, became a gleaming red mess of blood and organs. Tried to scream, but what came out of his lungs was blood rather than shrieks.
Lokowski was the first to notice Delta, and ran straight into the mass of insurrectionists. He stabbed two of them with a pair of medical scissors, and then shot one with the socom pistol. Letting the others deal with the wave on insurrectionists, he dragged Delta back behind cover as fast as he could. He then took out a pair of pliers, some gauss, and a towel already filled with blood from Mason's shoulder.
"Delta, can you hear me?" Lokowski asked. Unable to speak, Delta nodded, and then choked on some blood coming up through his throat. "Okay good! You're going to be okay! Alright! Just... stay with me... Shit!"
Rust turned to see Lokowski looming over Delta's body, trying to stop the bleeding from a hole the size of a baseball in his stomach.
"Delta!" Rust yelled, confused. He hadn't seen him, how could he have not...
Kate noticed next. She didn't say anything, but rather stopped firing and watched.
"Delta, you stay with me, okay! Don't die on me! Don't die on me..." Lokowski started to cry as he operated on his friend. Lokowski took off Delta's helmet.
All firing had ceased, now that the fight was over, and everybody turned to see Lokowski sobbing over his dying friend.
Delta's vision began to blur. Black faded around the edges of his eyes.
"Lo... Lokowski..." Delta managed, before puking out blood and shards of his stomach.
"Yes! You're going to be okay. Stay still." Lokowski urged on.
Delta reached into behind his breast plate, taking out a hidden note. "Give this... to my brother..." He said, "He's... he's the only family I have left."
"No Delta. You're gonna be able to tell him this yourself. You're going to be able to say this without the use of somebody else. With the air breathed from your lungs, the lungs that don't blood filling inside of them!" Lokowski said, trying to sooth Delta.
"Just... tell him..." Delta didn't have the strength to say more. He started to cry, as he started choking on his own vomit.
Lokowski rolled him over to the side, let him puke again, and then started pressurizing the wound some more. He knew it wasn't working, but he couldn't just give up. Not like that. Blood squirted all over Lokowski's face as he tried to save his friend he'd known since second grade.
Delta had started experiencing pain like he had never experienced before. He saw the white light start up in his vision. His own eyes became glassy, as he repeated the same word over and over again. The word was not understandable. He suffered through seconds that felt like an eternity of choking, trying to listen to what the blurred out world was trying to say. Soon, he couldn't see anything... the iron in his mouth became tasteless, and the sounds of the world deafened to him.
Lokowski looked down at Delta. "No. NO! Start breathing! Start breathing damn it!" He took Delta's breast plate off and tried to pump his chest again and again to restart his heart, his breathing, in final hopes of keeping his friend alive for just some seconds longer. His hope was shattered when he saw more blood flow from his mouth. Lokowski looked at his body... another tear shed from his eye, and for a moment the world was silent.
"FUCK!" Lokowski screamed and threw the bloody rags on the ground.
"Lokowski..." Rust said, trying to calm him.
"Shut up!" Lokowski screamed. He grabbed Delta's tactical battle rifle and started marching toward the second outpost.
"Lokowski, stop! That's an order!" Rust screamed.
"Do you think I care!" Lokowski screamed.
Everybody pointed their guns at Lokowski, except for Kate. She was too shocked to say anything. Lokowski looked at all of them.
"Lower your weapons, men." Rust said. Nobody did so. "Lower your weapons!" This time, everyone had been broken out of the trance, and lowered them as they were told.
Rust walked over to Lokowski and said, "Lokowski, I know you and Delta were great friends. You were there for each other every step of your lives. Now, now he's gone. Please, don't go out there. Not without us. You will get your revenge soon enough. When this army falls, when they all die, I'll let you choose the way the stragglers die. When I interrogate anybody, I'll let you choose the method of interrogation. After the war is over, I'll let you piss on every single one of their graves. But don't run out there alone, out of rage. I don't want to lose another fellow ODST."
Lokowski stared for a moment, and then he looked down on the ground, leaned against a wall, and slid down it crying. Everybody looked away from him, to give him privacy.
"Let's give him some privacy. He just went through something... big." Rust said. He turned around and told everyone, "We've got a job to do. Let's clear the rest out of the second base, and get Lokowski out of here. He's seen enough for one day."
Nobody had anything to say against that. As they readied to turn the corner, the air stood still again. The tensions were back up. And the depressing thing they just went through added on to it, as something that could happen to them or their friends.
***Post note: If you actually did participate in the role play, just tell me what your name was. I remember quite a bit from it though. If you were Lokowski or SF, and I did your name wrong, just tell me and I will gladly change them.
Now to the story wise new:
I was interrupted a lot during the writing of this story. So, If anything seems as though it turned sharply or if it shouldn't of happened that fast, or this or that, I understand. I will try and edit this one when I have the time, which will basically be when I complete the story.
I proofread through most of it, but if you catch anything, just let me know.
Also, I'm sorry for the sudden sharpness of Lokowski and Delta's history. I had forgotten to add that in the story, but it will come up again and again and again in the story, so don't worry about all that. You'll get to know everything about it.
What would you rate this chapter? 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, or 5/5?
What would you rate this story? (As seen so far) 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, or 5/5?
This is my first fanfic as well, so please, comment and, by all means, criticize. I'll be more than happy to accept it. ***